Recipes and Rituals
by Panache
Summary: Four Thanksgivings Mac and Webb didn't spend together, and one they did.
1. Martha Stewart with an Assault Rifle

**Disclaimer: **We all know they're not mine

**A/N:** I know I'm late for a Thanksgiving fic, but I actually got inspired by our turkey dinner itself, so hey, what can I say?

**----**

**Martha Stewart with an Assault Rifle **

**(November 22, 2001)**

"Don't do it, Mac."

Turning in surprise at the unexpected voice, Mac looks down at the can of cranberry sauce, and then back up at Webb . . . Clayton Webb who is standing across from her in a thousand dollar suit and cashmere blend overcoat in the canned goods aisle of a Safeway of all places. It seems wrong somehow, and she doesn't know why, its not as though he doesn't need to eat, but maybe its because he seems like the kind of person who would have people to do all these mundane everyday things for him. _Or maybe_ a little voice whispers, _maybe in your mind Webb simply evaporates the moment he leaves JAG_

It's a sad thought, made worse because it might be true, so she fights her guilt by flashing him a friendly smile and tries to act like she doesn't think he's a stranger in a strange land. "Why? Am I endangering National Security?"

"No, just Thanksgiving dinner," he retorts, but there's a smile on his face and an almost boyish twinkle in his eyes she's never seen before. Dear God, he might be human after all. "Put the can down Colonel, nice and slow."

He says it the way one negotiates with criminals and crazy people, and strangely she finds herself obeying the command.

Webb walks over to her cart, surveys the contents in frank assessment, and then looks back up at her in mock horror. "You can't be serious."

She was actually. It's not as though she's trying to replicate a Norman Rockwell painting. She's just trying to finally get around to marking the holiday, and a turkey loaf, Stove Top stuffing, and cranberry sauce seemed like a perfectly adequate to do it. Only now with Webb, whose holiday meal is probably prepared by a personal chef and served with heirloom silver, looking it over, it suddenly strikes her as rather sad.

And damn him for doing that. Really what gives him the right to show up in her grocery store and judge her? Which she's just on the verge of telling him, except he seems to have already come to some decision she wasn't privy to.

"No. I'm sorry. I can't let you do this." And before she knows it, he's walking away with her cart, so that she doesn't have much choice but to follow.

"What do you think you're doing, Webb?"

"Don't you trust me, Mac?"

"No."

That earns her an actual full-fledged grin that transforms his face and for a second, she thinks she understands what the blonde Harm told her about sees in him.

"I'm saving your guests. No one deserves turkey loaf. Not even Rabb."

Harm's not coming. It's too awkward right now, this strange dance of longing glances and not talking, of him knowing why Mic left her and yet giving no indication of how he feels about it, which sadly leaves her no one to invite. She's making Thanksgiving for one. And does that mean Webb's saving her?

Before she realizes it, they've stopped in front of the turkeys and he's talking to her about weights and cooking times and the fact she'll need to buy a fresh bird because she's left it too late to thaw it in time. "How do you feel about butter?"

She feels good about it, strangely feels good about this actually, as he leads her over to the specialty section of the deli to select a compound butter with garlic and herbs and telling her just to spread it under the skin as though it's the kind of thing he expects she does all the time. And maybe she should find that patronizing, like because she's a woman she knows her way around the kitchen, but something about the way he says it makes it feels more like a natural assumption of her competency in all things from assembling an assault rifle to whipping up a turkey that would make Martha jealous. And really who's going to argue with that?

So she lets him continue to maneuver her through the aisles, replacing her canned cranberries with fresh ones, some oranges, and a dialogue about how gelatinous molds have been responsible for a decline in the appreciation of this fruit. Deriding her Stovetop selection, he puts a pound of apples into her cart and then asks whether Rabb eats sausage, with a suspicious glint in his eye that says he already knows the answer.

Harm doesn't.

Webb takes her over to select some nice full fat Italian pork links for the stuffing. Really she'd tell him he's not ruining the naval aviator's Thanksgiving at all, but he seems to be getting such pleasure out of it.

Mac doesn't think about how much pleasure she's getting out of this strange trip into normalcy with Clayton Webb, until they're at the checkout lanes and he's scrawling the last of the instructions on a small notebook tablet he pulled out of the office supplies aisle and insists on paying for. Ninety-nine cents. Hey big spender.

It still feels like a gift.

He hands it over with a smirk. "Now you know all my secrets."

And she knows he expects her to come back with a fittingly cutting retort, but she just presses the spirals into the flesh of her palm, and says, "Thank you, Clay."

The change of his smirk to a shy smile is subtle, almost entirely in the eyes. That's okay, it's where she's looking right now anyway. For an instant he feels like a friend, like someone she could invite over to share this feast of his making, and besides its only fair that he be there to rescue her from this abyss of domesticity he's plunged her into without permission.

But just when she's found the words to do so, to somehow casually admit oh by the way she's going to be spending Thanksgiving alone and would he like to come over and help keep the leftovers from taking her refrigerator and holding it, he sticks out his hand and wishes her a happy holidays. And suddenly they're Colonel MacKenzie and Agent Webb, and its all very pleasant and professional and she'll be eating alone.

She makes the entire spread—way too much food for one woman, even her—following his recipes to the best of her ability. She burns the stuffing, and she's pretty sure she missed an ingredient in the cranberry sauce (even though there's only six), but the turkey comes out beautifully, and the bread-pudding he insisted was easier and better than pie actually manages to be both. And because the little TV tray she usually eats at seems woefully inadequate, she pulls out a table cloth, uses her grandparent's wedding china that Uncle Matt gave to her because he never quite knew what to do with it, and even lights a few candles.

Because Webb's right . . . she deserves better than turkey loaf.


	2. Butterball Hotline

**Butterball Hotline **

**(November 28, 2002)**

She hasn't thought about Webb for a month, and probably wouldn't think about him now except she managed to volunteer to hold Thanksgiving for the entire JAG office at her apartment because Harriet needs this, needs someone taking care of her for a change, and Bud needs to be something other than a burden to his wife, and Harm needs to stop laughing at the idea of her playing hostess.

So a week before, she pulls out the little notebook she'd tucked in the back of the family recipe box she never opens, and carefully makes her grocery list, growing a little nostalgic for Webb's commentary on food and the decline of the American palate. And that makes her think of him, down in Paramaribo, where right now it feels like the first blushes of summer, where no one is buying the ingredients for stuffing or needs rescuing from canned cranberry sauce, where he probably won't even get turkey loaf. And no one deserves that, not even the Tin Man.

He stays with her that week, a temperamental guest in her mind, alternately surly and sad, and she doesn't have the heart to kick him out because after all he gave her the capacity to give this to others. On Sunday she sits down and outlines cooking times and temperatures and tries to come up with a battle plan that will endanger as little food as possible because she can't stand the thought of Harriet having to rescue her.

On Monday, she moves the frozen turkey to the refrigerator to thaw and thinks how Webb would be proud she remembered to buy it far enough in advance and how she should have listened a little more closely to the roasting time for larger birds. It's enough to make her wish she had his email or phone number because really these things are important, and the guest Webb in her head insists he'll be greatly offended if she manages to ruin one of his recipes in front of Rabb because she failed to obtain precise information.

So on Tuesday she goes searching for a way to contact him, which is easier said than done. She could ask Harm, but that would involve explaining why she wants to contact Webb, and she doesn't think he's going to buy cooking times, though it is the true and legitimate explanation. She calls the CIA, but they are really just as forthcoming as you would imagine, and she didn't have much hope on that front. However, the phone call does yield some valuable intel because apparently her name has come up in conversation with Agent Webb more than once, and perhaps she'd like the number for his mother? She would.

It takes her until the evening to work up the nerve to call Porter Webb. While she considers herself a brave woman, not easily intimidated by anything, the Great Falls address throws her back to her childhood, to being the girl in cheap clothes that smelled like beer, to invitations over that got extended by girls at school and never followed through by their mothers. There are fences and train tracks between people like her and the Webbs, and she's always thought they might be there for a reason. But the thought of Harriet guiding her through this is too much to handle, so she shores herself up, straightens her uniform and picks up the phone.

It's a mistake.

Porter Webb is inordinately polite (they always are, it just makes it worse), but when she asks for a way to contact Webb in South America, there's a fractional pause, a silence that can't be anything other than disapproving. Suddenly she's thrown back to dirty dresses and birthday party invitations that got lost in the mail, and before she can stop herself she's explaining about using one of Webb's recipes and cooking times.

"I do have a number for Clayton, but he's not always easily reachable. Let me have Charlotte come and speak with you. I'm sure she'll be able to help you with whatever you need. Clayton learned to cook from her, you know."

She didn't know. "Oh really, that's not necessary if I could just--"

"I assure you Charlotte would be happy to help, and I hate to think of you making an international call just for something like this."

Which is how she winds up taking notes as the Webbs' cook rattles through rapid fire instructions on cooking times and gravy and how unnecessary it is to baste. Charlotte is a nice woman and gives her the number where she can be reached on Thanksgiving day if any emergencies come up, and Mac thinks that if she had had a Charlotte in her kitchen as a child she might have learned to feel as passionately about food as Webb.

Porter gets back on the phone and asks politely, "Was Charlotte able to help or would you still like Clayton's number, dear?'

She would, but she doesn't know why. After all she had only wanted to call about the turkey and she has all the necessary information now. "No, no, that's fine, but would you um . . . tell Clay Happy Holidays for me?"

"Of course, and I'm sure he would wish you the same."

When she hangs up, the Marine can't shake the vague feeling she just got outmaneuvered by a five foot one, ninety eight pound member of the Junior League.

Thursday comes around, and she can feel the panic setting in. What the hell was she thinking? She can't do this. Sure she can put together an airtight case not even her old lawschool professor can get through, speak fluent Farsi, strip down any gun you give her in under thirty seconds, take out a terrorist with her bare hands . . .

No, that's not quite right. She didn't take out that terrorist alone. Webb was there. Webb with his calm eyes and steady voice. Webb who made her stronger with his arrogant certainty, his irrational confidence in her abilities. Webb who long before he believed she could do that, trusted her to do this.

She can't let him be wrong. He's been through too much recently. So she rolls up her sleeves, lays out the little notebook beside the stove, and sets to work—chopping and mixing, sautéing and boiling—and throughout it all there's Webb in her head, shoring her up, making her the best of herself because he's too much of a snob to associate with anything less.

It doesn't come out perfectly (the stuffing dries out at the edges, and the gravy's lumpy), but there's still the sense of accomplishment that only comes with doing something so far out of your comfort zone its off the map, and the look of joyous relief on Harriet's face when she's presented with an entire spread of food she didn't have to cook wipes away any remaining self-consciousness. Even Harm's suitably impressed, and when he corners her in the kitchen to tell her so, her stomach does a little flip flop that hasn't happened in a long time.

"This is amazing, Mac. You really outdid yourself."

"You had doubts?" She tries to put an edge in her voice, but they both know she's just teasing.

"Never, ninja-girl." He says it with such sincerity, as he takes his time brushing a smudge of imaginary flour off her cheek, that she forgets the past week and a half of teasing. Somewhere in the back of her head, Clayton Webb snorts in derision. She tells him to shut up.

She does however treat him to the sight of Harmon Rabb trying to find something to eat other than cranberry sauce and green beans for a full ten minutes, before she finally silences her little devil Webb and pulls Harm to the side to present him with a wild-rice stuffed squash and mixed green salad that earns her a knee-weakening smile and the accolade of life-saver.

It's months until she thinks about Webb again.


	3. Short End of the Wishbone

**Short End of the Wishbone**

**(November 27, 2003)**

"Spend Thanksgiving with me."

The words are out of her mouth before she has a chance to second guess or rethink, and the moment they are she begins to do both. Thanksgiving is four weeks away, and they haven't exactly been the type of couple to plan that far in advance or anything in advance or call themselves a couple really. Their 'dates' have been restricted to hospital visits and PT sessions and now that he's almost out of rehab, the occasional casual evening at home. Their own private Clay and Sarah world where they make sense, where the hands massaging her feet get a little stronger, a little steadier, every time and she catches herself thinking stupid things like how nice this will be when she's pregnant or if he'd ever give up his townhouse for something with three bedrooms.

His hands have stilled on her feet, and she holds her breath wondering if she just popped the soap bubble. Maybe he doesn't remember, maybe that afternoon doesn't stand out in his mind the way it does in hers. Maybe he has an entire set of family traditions she won't fit into. They've never been the type to tell "when I first noticed you" stories. It would be too depressing and remind her why they don't make sense outside this apartment. But this is a happy memory for her, and she hopes he kept it, too.

The hands, which had been so still, start to move again, long, teasing languid strokes, moving further and further up her legs.

"Clay." His name is a low, warning growl in the back of her throat, but he remains alarmingly unperturbed.

"Hush. I'm considering. It's been a long time since I've eaten turkey loaf. It might upset my fragile recovery."

"Oh!" She rolls up to lunge at him, only realizing a split second too late, its exactly the reaction he'd been hoping for when, with more grace and strength than she's seen since Paraguay, he catches her round the waist and pulls her in for a kiss that spirals into two, three, until she's stopped counting, stopped being irritated that he can push her buttons so well, and enjoys it so much.

Only lowering her back to the couch when the tigress has been tamed to a kitten, he leans over her, his fingertips stroking the hollow of her throat in mock contemplation as he drops an affectionate kiss on the tip of her nose.

"I take it my cranberries will not be coming out of a can?"

"Mmmhh," is the only response she has time to give.

----

She's more excited about this holiday than she wants to admit. It's the third time she's made this meal, and it's beginning to feel familiar, like one of those family rituals other people have. They went shopping over the weekend, braving the crowds to meander through the Safeway just as they had two years ago, only he doesn't have to ask her how she feels about butter, and when he questions whether she trusts him as he eyes a pomegranate, she says 'yes' without hesitation. It feels normal and natural, and she only thinks of Paraguay once, when she finds him stopped in front of the canned tomatoes, eyes unfocused, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his overcoat, and she has to call him Webb before he responds.

When the phone call comes on Wednesday she's halfway through cutting up the bread to leave out overnight for the bread-pudding and stuffing. She doesn't even have to pick up the phone to know who it will be, what he's going to say.

"I'm sorry, Sarah."

He's not. She can hear it in his voice, the adrenaline running just below the surface. His first field assignment back, he's excited and anxious and not sorry at all. So she takes a page out of his book and lies.

"It's okay. I understand." And she tells herself it is and she does, whispers to her heart that he needs this one, and it won't always be this way. But somewhere inside, the little girl who has grown too used to disappointment knows it will, knows she can only keep something if it's broken, and wishes Clay hadn't healed so fast.

A fit of rage overtakes her at that thought because it's horrible and selfish and oh so very true. Yanking open the refrigerator, she begins to chuck all the groceries they'd bought so carefully—the cranberries that started all this, gone; the high-end compound butter and specialty sausage, he made a side-trip to an out of the way deli to get, outta here; the pomegranates he assured her he had special plans for, into the trash they go. Bit by bit, piece by piece, she rids herself of Webb, and his influence, and her stupid hopes. Only stopping when she reaches the notebook, rumpled and food stained, and full of empty promises – "Now you know all my secrets." She presses the spirals into her flesh, hard, feeling the bite, the pain, that comes with this. She'll never know all Webb's secrets, there will always be more, but every piece of himself that he gives her feels rare, precious, and because of that she can't just throw it away.

Idly, she flips through the pages until she reaches the back, where she'd outlined her battle-plan of last year. There beside each line he's made notes, written their initials in quiet duty assignments, thought about how they'd work together. She rubs her thumb over the last line, the 'CW' scrawled beside the word cleanup, and the 'SM' beside one added word 'rest'. It's their Thanksgiving, the one they should have had, right there on paper, in black and white, and it means something that he wanted it, too.

She tucks the notebook back in her recipe box.

----

She goes into work on Thursday because she has nothing else to do, because she refuses to sit at home watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade on TV and bemoan her fate, like some pitiful hausfrau. While she's working on the McCrary file, she alternately indulges in fantasies of Clay somewhere horrible where the only Thanksgiving meal is bugs, and hoping he misses her just as much as she misses him.

"Should I even ask where Webb is?"

"No," she responds without looking up. She doesn't need to see Harm's pity or his triumph because she's afraid she might think he was right. Silently she wills him away, and of course he walks into her office uninvited. He stares down at her for a moment, then grabs her coat off the back of the door and lays it across her desk. "Come on."

It's Chinese and not roast Turkey. There's fortune cookies rather than bread pudding, and absolutely no sausage and apple stuffing, but there's laughter and friendship, and Harm doesn't mention Clay again, and it's damn near perfect.

And she still misses the paper Thanksgiving she should have had.


	4. Family Gathering

A/N: I don't usually do this, but I'm adding an high-level angst warning for this.

- + - + - + - + -

**Family Gathering**

**(November 24, 2011)**

She doesn't even realize its Thanksgiving until nine o'clock at night. Like everyone else in London she got up this morning and went to work without a second thought. Would have gone to sleep in the same state of peaceful oblivion, were it not for the damn message on the answering machine—Harm's mother wishing them a Happy Thanksgiving, though of course she doesn't use those words. 'Happy' has been taken out of the lexicon of their interactions. No, it's done in the same soft, nebulous words, everyone else uses these days, words that dance around the truth, so when it somehow inadvertently slips through, she feels it anew every time, until she just wants to scream, wants people to say it repeatedly, until she's scarred over, until she stops feeling like a freshly picked scab.

"We just wanted you to know our thoughts are with you today." It's obvious Patricia expects her to know exactly what today is, but she doesn't, not immediately. She actually has to think about it, has to sit down and mentally click through her calendar, think what about today would prompt a phone-call, and when she finally hits upon it, it hurts more for the protracted journey than it would have if Patricia had just said it. Until now, it was just a day like every other day, gray and cold and wet, completely unremarkable . . . if you didn't count the fact she got up this morning.

These days that alone should be cause for celebration.

Yet she doesn't feel like celebrating much of anything. And despite the United States' decree to the contrary, she certainly doesn't have anything to be thankful for. These past few months she's lived in a state of suspended animation, going through the motions of being alive because there's nothing else she can do. Since Harm left, since he got on that goddammed plane and left her alone with their daughter in a foreign land where they don't celebrate Thanksgiving, she doesn't know how to do anything other than get up and go to work and be angry.

And she has to be angry with Harm, has to maybe even hate him a little, because if she doesn't, if she ever stops being furious with him for giving Vincenze the time off to go to his sister's wedding and getting on that military transport to the Watertown himself, if she ever forgives him for dying on her, she'll start crying and never stop.

But she's never been good at staying mad at Harm. And tonight when Kiley curls up against her, wraps her small brown arms around her neck, and asks, 'Why did Daddy leave us?' she can't lie anymore, not even to herself. So she does the only thing she can, pulls her daughter close and lulls her to sleep with stories about Harm, telling her how much he loved her, how he fought so hard for them to have her, how he'd never wanted to leave them behind.

It soothes Kiley, but nearly ends her, and the message comes precariously close to finishing the job. She fed her daughter food out of a microwave tonight. On Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving day, and their daughter doesn't know it because she didn't have Harm's black bean and sweet potato chili or the butternut squash he used to joke made him fall in love, just a hot dog and violently orange macaroni. Fake food for this fake family.

It is so incredibly good Harm never kept alcohol in the house because she desperately wants a drink, and then they'd take Kiley away and she can't lose her, too. So she paces the small square footage of their flat, just paces, over and over, trying to figure out where she goes from here.

Maybe she should have followed the Admiral's suggestion, taken Harriet and Bud up on their offer, and moved back to the states. Maybe staying here in London in this space that has always been _their_ home just makes it worse, but her life, Kiley's life, is here. Her daughter's only steps on American soil were centered around a grave site at Arlington, and she calls a sidewalk a pavement, and she doesn't need more change right now. And here is strangely where Sarah's been happiest, where for six, too-brief years she seemed to finally be doing things right—laughing with Harm and fighting with him and loving him; carving a place for herself, an identity that had nothing to do with the rank on her shoulder, or past sins which forever sit on a file somewhere in the Pentagon.

Here, no one but her husband calls (called) her Mac. Kiley calls her Mommy, and the other women working at the watch group call her Sarah (except the sixty-eight year old receptionist who somehow gets away with calling her dear). And that's always been fine, been right somehow, as she built this new life, became this new woman who smiles so much she actually has the start of laugh-lines. Mac became Harm's alone, a side of her only he was privy to, only he could claim.

Now though as she trails her fingers along the glass of the big picture window, tracing the outline of her reflection, telling herself that she isn't really crying, that she's mistaking the raindrops outside for tears, she doesn't feel like she'll ever smile again, and the lines don't make her look anything other than tired. She doesn't know this woman, this woman who forgot Thanksgiving, who fed Harm's daughter food out of a box. This never would have happened if it had been Harm here instead of her. He loves this holiday too much, loves gathering their beautiful patchwork family around the table, and sharing what he's thankful for ("You. I'm so thankful for you"). It seems wrong that Mac forgot something so important to Harm, to her.

But then Mac's not here right now, maybe hasn't been around for months. Her hand stills on the window-pane at that realization. Maybe even she can't have Mac anymore. Maybe the tough, feisty ninjagirl, who would so obviously know what to do right now, can't exist without her flyboy. Maybe Mac died with Harm.

It's a terrifying thought because she's not sure Sarah's strong enough to do this alone.

Because it can't be true, for Kiley's sake, for her own sanity, because she has to believe there's no such thing as an ex-Marine, and Mac's still here, she goes searching for her, moves quietly to their bedroom, opens the closet, and with trembling hands reaches past Harm's uniforms. still hanging there in precision order, past his ugly Hawaiian shirts she's worn so many times since his death, they've started to smell faintly of Chanel, rather than Irish Spring Soap and cigars, until she just touches a single box up so high only Harm could have put it there. Standing on tip-toe, her fingers scrabble at the cardboard, coaxing it closer and closer to the edge, until it reaches the tipping point, falling the short distance into her hands.

Setting it down on the bed, she opens the flaps with no little trepidation, almost afraid it won't be there, that she's imagined it all, and just at the last moment she has to close her eyes, can't open them again until her fingers touch the wool gabardine. It's there. Thank God. It's there and it's real. Releasing a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, she trails her fingers along the ribbons, the physical evidence of her achievements, her strength. Any other night she might feel silly or overly sentimental, but she needs this too much.

There's a kind of comfort in the old ritual of this. She'd been afraid it would feel like a sham, a little girl playing dress-up, but with each new layer, each adjustment, she feels pieces of herself come back to her. So that when she turns to look in the mirror, it's almost the Marine who looks back. Almost but not quite. Perhaps it's the cover, that final measurement, last imposition of order just prior to facing a messy world.

But when she goes in search it's not the cover that stills her fingers. For a second she doesn't know what it is, can't place the rough, scarred wood, which feels strange and yet familiar. When it hits her, its only sheer luck she's near the bed because her legs just won't support her anymore.

Slowly, gently, she pulls out the old recipe box and sets in her lap, draws quiet strength from the history that's inside -- Uncle Matt's Four Alarm Chili, her Grandmother's naan. There's even a recipe for the Tuna surprise her mother used to make. It was horrible and everything came out of a can, and she'd never make it, but it's somehow right that it's there. Flipping through the cards, she finds others she'd forgotten, pulls them out one by one, engaging in a dialogue with her past . . . one she'd tried to leave behind.

She'd seen no reason to take the box to London. So little space, and this was nothing more than clutter. She didn't cook from it, hadn't opened it for almost two years, and the last time she had . . . well, it wasn't exactly a pleasant memory, certainly not one she wanted to carry into her new life.

Harm didn't understand—"It's a piece of your family, Mac."—and she hadn't known how to tell him, how to explain that the only recipes she'd ever used were in a little red notebook tucked in the back, written in the hand of a man whose name they didn't say. She didn't see her family when she looked at that box, just Webb. He'd tainted it, and she hadn't wanted to carry that taint with her.

"Just leave it, Harm. It's not worth the space."

Never has she been so glad Harm rarely listens to her when he thinks he's right, and he was so very right about this. This box isn't clutter, isn't tainted. It's little pieces of her, moments of her life told in food, some happy (Aunt Trixie's icebox pie, made for her sixth birthday), some bittersweet (Mic's Beach Burgers with cooking times measured in beers for him, sodas for her), but all part of her, part of Mac. And when she reaches the notebook in the back, she feels no anger, no regret. It's right that it should be here, just as much as her Mom's Tuna Surprise.

But unlike the others, she doesn't take it out, just leaves it to sit in the box, isolated, separate. Serving out its exile, just like the man, undemanding, unobtrusive and yet impossible to ignore.

He'd come, not to Harm's funeral in D.C., but to the Memorial Service held by the London JAG office, sat in the back of the modest chapel, noticeable only for his civilian attire in a sea of military, for the way he held himself apart from all the others, trying not to intrude. To this day she doesn't know what made her look back from her seat in the front row to see him there, his face the impenetrable, unreadable mask of Webb, Harm's not-quite friend.

She stared at him longer than was decent or comfortable, knowing he was aware of her scrutiny, but he never looked back. Then she supposed he wasn't there for her, knew she would have been pissed if he was. Still, she found herself thinking of him at the oddest times during the service, wondering things like why he was in London, how he'd known about the service, did he find it as strange as she did that everyone here kept referring to Captain Rabb, did it make him feel like they were talking about someone other than Harm, too?

Somewhere mid-way through, she stopped fighting it, stopped listening to the eulogies, the stories she didn't know, and just let her thoughts flow where they would, to Webb, to Harm, to Webb and Harm—to a smug smile and an unknowing promise of a $500 a plate lunch; to the constant verbal sparring over right and wrong, necessity and morality; to a dimly lit film room, an exit after a few brief words, and Harm's odd reserve instead of elation in the days following what should have been his most satisfying victory. No, Webb hadn't come for her.

But he stayed for her. Long after the others had filed out, offering heartfelt, but distant condolences to the widow of a man they all admired, Webb stayed, standing in the back looking as awkward and out of place as she thought she'd ever seen him. Strict social etiquette was made for situations like this.

"It was good of you to come."

"I'm so very sorry, Mac."

They'd just stood there separated by five rows of chairs, in an unfamiliar room, in a foreign country, uttering empty pre-prescribed phrases, and it meant more than any of the other deeply personal stories she'd hear about how Captain Rabb had touched so-and-so's life because they were mourning the same man. Because when Kiley ran back into the room with Ensign Reeves in tow, and Webb crouched down to greet her, one hand extended, with a quiet, "You must be Kiley. I knew your father," all Mac could think was _Yes, yes he did._

Kiley hadn't known what to make of the strange man with quicksilver eyes and a chameleon smile, and even though everything about him at that moment was soft and inviting and genuine, her daughter had always had a nearly prescient instinct for danger. So before she knew it, Mac was across the room scooping her forty pound, six-year old daughter into her arms, explaining her shyness with strangers, and avoiding the look in Webb's eyes that said he knew a lie when he heard one.

"Of course, I understand. I shouldn't h-" He pressed his lips together and looked at Kiley's dark head buried against her neck. "She's just as beautiful as . . . as Harm always said she was." And before she had time to process the implications of that, he was extending a gold leafed business card and saying, "If you or Kiley ever need anything . . ."

The card for the Special Assistant to the American Ambassador sits in a folder beside the phone, the number's programmed into her cell. For her daughter she'll call in every favor she never wanted owed.

Kiley is her miracle. Every hardship, every 'why me' moment of her life, she'd go through it all twice over for the opportunity to feel this, to love her daughter so completely that everything, all her pride, her anger, fades in its face. Her four percent investment in hope that paid off in spades, and it doesn't matter Kiley came into the world somewhere else, in someone else's arms. They've always belonged to each other.

Harm knew that, saw it from the first. It's why he fought so hard, tilting at windmills. And they'd been such very large windmills, a foreign couple adopting in a foreign country would have been hard enough, but a transient military couple, with a history of alcoholism, adopting a child refugee in a foreign country . . . it shouldn't have happened. She's never thought about it too hard before, about the impossible odds her Don Quixote had conquered, just been too grateful to question. But now, as Webb's words come back to her --'just as beautiful as Harm always said she was' -- everything slides into place like a key in a lock, and she realizes she isn't the only one willing to call in unwanted favors for Kiley's sake.

It's so blindingly obvious, she can't help but laugh at her own stupidity. Laughter transmuting to tears and back again, until she's laughing and crying all at the same time, so much emotion it can't be contained in one simple expression. And its not until Kiley's climbing up on the bed, tangling around her in mess of too-long limbs and nonsense words that she realizes how loud she'd become.

"Shh, Mommy, shh, daddy loves you."

Oh, if only she'd known how much. She pulls her daughter closer, breathes the sweet-water scent of her in, and says her own Thanksgiving. _You. I'm so thankful for you._

Over Kiley's shoulder, she looks at the little red notebook still tucked in the recipe box and thinks of the only time she ever spoke to her daughter about the man who gave it, at the memorial service when Kiley'd asked, "Who's he?" Such a simple question, and she didn't have an answer, hadn't known how to explain the man who was more than a friend and less than an acquaintance, so she'd just whispered, "Nobody, sweetie. He's nobody."

Because he's not, she takes the notebook out and puts it on the bed with the other recipes.

"Come meet your family."

- + - + - + - + -


	5. Feasting on Leftovers

**Feasting on Leftovers**

**(November 22, 2012)**

When he asks to take them out to dinner on Thursday, she almost takes too long to respond. Gets lost in the fact that this involves pre-planning and promises, something he doesn't do with her (with Kiley, yes, but not her). What's more Thursday is Thanksgiving, a fact which could not possibly have escaped his notice. Because she knows all too well it sometimes can, she checks just to make sure. Yes, he's very aware of the day, which adds a layer of implicit, unspoken claims. And she's not sure she's ready to lay claim to anything so easily lost.

As though sensing a possible, disastrous wrong turn in this thing they're not doing, he's already half-way through paving her an escape route of assumed other plans. Without thinking she reaches out to touch the inside of his wrist, quieting him instantly.

"We'd love to."

The pleased light in his eyes is just brilliant enough to blind her to the fact that she'd been keeping the day open just in case, the same way she makes fewer and fewer lunch appointments on the off chance he'll call. They have a regular table at a quiet back-alley pub, perfectly equidistant from their respective offices, a neutral no man's land where neither can be seen as going out of their way for the other. She ignores Webb's seemingly endless number of appointments which always take him to her side of town after lunch, and what kind of gentleman would he be if he didn't walk her up to her office, when it was so convenient?

He has one today, something only semi-important at the Japanese consulate, at some unspecified time which if he leaves with her he'll just make. They walk at a brisk pace, hands in their coat pockets, every inch the busy colleagues. Webb's good at pretense, and Mac's always been a quick study.

"Thursday." He repeats solemnly when they arrive at the watch-group's offices, as though afraid she's forgotten in the six blocks. Not likely. "Call me if you need to cancel."

She won't. Kiley would never forgive her if she did. Already she's trying to find the time to go shopping for the new dress her daughter will insist she needs. It hasn't escaped her notice that her seven-year old has the beginnings of a crush on this man who takes her to the ballet and Disney movies, makes fry-ups (sorry Harm), and calls her Mata Hari.

He smiles at her from the doorway and mouths, "Thursday."

"Thursday," she whispers back. Her daughter might not be the only one with a crush.

From the front desk, where she's opening the day's mail, Mrs. Barstow nods approvingly as Clay takes his leave. "Your Mr. Webb, such the gentleman." Mac's attempted to explain he isn't 'her' anything, but the receptionist never listens. Sometime in August she just gave up (sometime in October she started to like it). The sixty-nine year old grandmother thinks Webb walks on water, finds him utterly charming, and advises her to 'hold onto this one, dear.' Sarah bites her lip and imagines that if Clarissa Barstow knew what 'her Mr. Webb' actually does she'd slip that brass letter opener between his ribs without batting an eye.

That should probably bother her more, but she had six-years of perfect. She figures a person only gets to ask for that once, and this isn't a half-bad way to spend her remaining time.

Which isn't to say she doesn't have her doubts. There are days when it feels like that's all she has.

When he disappeared for two weeks in May and she wound up leaving fourteen voicemails he didn't return. Stood in his office when he got back, trembling with suppressed rage expecting the same old crap of 'need to know' and 'I can't tell you where I go or what I do,' and got blindsided instead by him asking why it mattered, voice laced with something precariously close to hope. She told him she wouldn't put Kiley through this again, and neither one of them said anything about the fact her daughter never went through it the first time.

In August, when he brought Kiley a wayang kulit shadow puppet from Indonesia, a hand-made ghost of buffalo leather that hangs beside her bed. Mac pulled him aside with a harsh warning, and he left the dark blue batik table cloth he bought for her on the couch, with a look of apology that almost made her forgive his sins in advance.

Now when she can't wipe the smile off her face, and she thinks if she's not careful she could get used to feeling like this.

He presents every gift to Kiley in person, never by mail, never when Sarah can't assure herself he's real. And she gets ludicrously detailed daily schedules from his secretary, fifty-percent of which she knows are utter fabrication. (It still makes her feel better.)

And even though she knows this is not the way to keep from getting hurt, she tells Kiley about the dinner on their walk home from school, prompting an odd celebratory hopscotch, and excited babble about where Clay, who this month she's decided to call by his full and proper name of Clayton, might be taking them and will there be scones. Mac seriously hopes not. It sounds horrendously formal and inappropriate for an American holiday.

Clayton Webb is corrupting her daughter. How weird is that?

She makes a mental note to buy the fixings for a weeks worth of vegetarian meals and feels mildly better about it.

Not that it's always been this way. Ten months ago, when she'd finally worked up enough resolve to take her daughter to meet Webb because she didn't like having unpaid debts, Kiley had regarded him with no little distrust, stared up at him with wide liquid brown eyes and pronounced solemnly, "It's the Nobody Man."

There'd been a tiny flicker of emotion on Webb's face, just a deepening of creases for a fraction of an instant, a scream of pain that echoed in the silence of his usually neutral expression. And in her guilt, Mac found herself asking him to lunch before she could think better of it. It was a strange, tentative affair, filled with false-starts and lingering silences, until they finally gave up and just let Kiley chatter on incessantly about some nonsense, which Clay treated like a mission briefing, listening with sharp intensity, offering the occasional deferential insight, and taking the disdainful rebukes of the pig-tailed tyrant like those of the DCI himself. By the time Sarah paid for the meal, Kiley had commanded his presence at her birthday party and deigned to give him a name.

She's actually given him several, tries out a new moniker nearly once a month, some variations on his real name, some seemingly crafted from thin air, and Mac can't tell whether she's searching for the right one or if they're all the right one and somehow her daughter knows the difference. Kiley called him Webb for almost six weeks in the summer and sounded so much like Harm, she had to ask her to stop. After that it was John, and Sarah thought that just served her right. She hopes Clayton will stick, but doubts it.

"He likes it, Mom."

He likes everything Kiley does.

Sometimes late at night, she lays awake, stares up at the ceiling and worries that when she finally comes to her senses about all this, its going to wind up hurting everyone. Sometimes she thinks it's going to hurt Clay the most. And sometimes, during moments like this when her daughter is dancing between snow patches and dreaming of scones on Thanksgiving, she prays she'll just stay crazy, and it won't end at all.

The week goes by and she blessedly manages not to regain her sanity, so on Thursday when Clay comes to pick them up, they're both wearing new dresses, Kiley's a beautiful verdant green that makes her seem like a forest nymph, Mac's a simple blue sheath. It was on sale and will double nicely for all those holiday parties she'd need to do on the fundraising circuit, and she's so relieved she won't have to go back out when the crowds start to build, and she forgets all of that the moment Clay's eyes slide to hers as he tells Kiley, "You look beautiful."

The restaurant is quintessentially Clay, exclusive and individual and dripping with ambiance. The kind where the menus don't have prices and the waiters come in between the courses to brush away crumbs that have accumulated in front of Kiley. It's too much, too formal, too expensive, too good, too everything . . . it might even be too perfect. She doesn't know. She just knows its wrong, not what she wanted at all.

Halfway through the salad, he senses her discomfort isn't abating, and leans over to with hesitant, imploring eyes, to whisper, "Should we go?"

She shakes her head no, but she's never been as good a liar as he is.

Excusing himself from the table with a half smile, he comes back in three minutes with a full-fledged one and assurances that all has been taken care of. She's about to protest once again, when he touches her lightly on the shoulder and asks, "Don't you trust me, Mac?"

His smile is cocky, but his eyes are afraid, like this might just be the most important question he's ever asked. And she's made Clayton Webb fear . . . that shouldn't make her feel anywhere near as good as it does.

"Absolutely."

They wind up sitting around her coffee table, in their best clothes, with a spread of carryout from one of the more exclusive restaurants in London. Briefly she wonders how much that cost him, but he holds up a forkful of butternut squash ravioli for her to taste with a smile that says he doesn't care.

"Wait!" Kiley interrupts, tiny voice filled with so much distress, Clay nearly drops his fork to check she's okay. "We haven't said thanks. Dad always made us say thanks."

Oh God. She might just be the world's worst mother. Webb regards the turkey roulade like its booby-trapped, and she knows he's preparing to bolt.

But Kiley continues on blissfully oblivious to the sudden tension. "I'm thankful Mom's not so sad anymore." Clay looks at her like a small miracle has just occurred, until she pokes him in the ribs and whispers, "It's your turn. I'm hungry."

"Oh, I don't know, this right now is pretty good."

"Mom?"

You. She thinks, I'm so thankful for you. But that emotion's too real, too close home, and she's not sure the 'you' just means Kiley, so she shrugs and smiles and says, "I'm pretty thankful Clay managed to talk the chef into takeout."

The joking response seems to put them back on course and the rest of the dinner is pleasant, but Clay doesn't offer to feed her anything else, and she makes sure not to touch him.

Yes, she's a coward. It keeps her safe.

She gets up to make the coffee, charging Kiley with devising their after-dinner entertainment, expecting a board game or, God forbid, Charades, so when she comes out to find the two of them laughing and twirling to 'Paper Moon,' it stuns her so much she doesn't think to resist as the song changes over and Clay holds out his hand.

"You've never danced with me."

They fit together just as they always have, so naturally, so simply, but differently, too. Over eight years have gone by and it should separate them, keep them at arms length, but somehow, gloriously somehow, it doesn't. They've known each other for years and yet they're meeting each other anew, different people, maybe better people.

Clay's hand slips from her waist to the base of her spine, and she lets herself be pulled a little closer, her fingers moving from his shoulder to brush the nape of his neck, just lets herself feel this, this quiet, perfect moment happening in her living room with 'I Thought About You,' for a soundtrack. He's asking a question with this dance, and she thinks her answer might be 'yes.'

Yes.

Such a scary word . . . 'yes'. (She's always been better at 'no') Yes opens doors, accepts possibilities, takes chances on changing the status quo.

And maybe her status quo isn't wonderful, maybe its lonely and cold, but its hers and its comfortable. What's more, maybe she doesn't have a right to have her status quo change. She's had a wonderful man in her life, a man who should still be here, and what would he think if he walked in now? Would he feel betrayed?

Needing to get away from this confusing thing that's happening, she steps out of Clay's embrace with a sad smile. And though her eyes are begging him not to go, she's the one running away, so the message might not be all that clear.

She wants this. It's all she can think when she sinks onto the bed she and Harm shared. The bed that's felt empty and lonely for over a year, and she's so tired of being lonely. Rolling onto her side, she reaches out to touch her husband's pillow. I miss you. Drawing it close to her body, she tucks her face against it and wishes she could still smell him there. Wishes he could be lying here beside her because a pillow doesn't hold her back, and it had felt so good to be held.

Is this okay, Harm? Is it okay to want another man to hold me because you can't? Is it okay to want it to be the man standing in our living room? Is it okay that it's Clay?

And then as if in answer to her unconscious prayer for this thing she needs so much, Harm's words come to her, floating up from the abyss of long forgotten memories, to wash over her in benediction.

"I know he was my friend, and I'm gonna miss him. I'm gonna miss the way you looked when you talked about him. He made you feel good . . ."

Go in peace.

He's gone when she comes out. Kiley's curled up on the couch asleep, and Clay's gone, and isn't that just the way her life works?

Kneeling beside the couch, she brushes the strands of hair away from Kiley's face. "I'm so sorry, sweetie."

She can't blame Clay. She really can't. Can't blame this man who's probably never worn a hand-me-down pair of clothes or eaten food that wasn't freshly cooked because what is she offering him but leftovers of another man's life? Everyone gets tired of leftovers eventually.

Which is why when there's the faint jingle of keys in the lock, and Clay comes through the door laden down with groceries, she doesn't know what to do, doesn't understand at first.

"Hey."

"Hey."

He motions her into the kitchen with a jerk of his head, and proceeds to unload the groceries in near silence—milk and raisins and coconut and day old bread from the bakery down the block (she doesn't want to know how he managed that)—such a strange combination of food. It takes her a moment to place what she's looking at, and when she does her eyes instinctively seek out the recipe box. It's open and the notebook sits on the counter.

"Is this okay?"

Yes, it's okay. This might be the most okay she's been in ages.

Nodding, she moves over to pick up the notebook, open, not to the recipe for bread-pudding, but the battle-plan at the back. Plans in her hand, initials in his, the paper Thanksgiving they never had.

Clay comes up behind her, reaching around to touch the smeared ink of the last line. "I'm sorry we never got to do that. I wish . . ."

The kiss is sweet and brief and full of promise, and when she pulls away its only to rest her head on his shoulder, to close her eyes and feel something frighteningly like happiness.

"Next year. We'll do it, next year."

- + - + - + - + -

I hope this has been as much fun for you as it has been for me. Happy Holidays. I'm off to go back to my larger angsty piece.

Panache


End file.
